Digital literacy in practice: Developing an interactive and accessible open educational resource based on the SCONUL Seven Pillars of Information Literacy

As part of a review of the undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum at Leeds Metropolitan University, digital literacy was formally adopted as a graduate attribute in 2011. Libraries and Learning Innovation (LLI) have since been working on ways to improve the digital literacy of staff and students through a variety of means including promotion of Open Educational Resources (OER). This paper deals with one of those projects: the use of Xerte Online Toolkits (XOT) to create interactive resources which are supported by mobile devices. This ongoing project is truly collaborative, with members of academic staff and library staff (academic librarians, learning technologists and the repository developer) working together to create useful tools to support learning. The XOT project resulted from an audit by the university’s Open Educational Resources Group (led by LLI) which identified a need for mobile-friendly tutorials. From this, an interactive tutorial focussing on the SCONUL 7 Pillars of Information Literacy was developed. With the addition of new software to create interactive subject guides, the project aims to create more interactive resources to support students’ digital literacy

Maladaptive perfectionism and psychological distress:The mediating role of resilience and trait emotional intelligence

University students experience significantly high levels of psychological distress. Maladaptive perfectionism has been identified as a common trait among students that leads to diagnosed conditions such as depression and anxiety. Resilience and trait emotional intelligence have also been identified as common predictors of psychological illness and mediators between related maladaptive perfectionism. However, no current research has investigated maladaptive perfectionism’s relationship with a more general psychological distress experienced by university students. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate maladaptive perfectionism, resilience and trait emotional intelligence association with psychological distress in 171 university students (29 males; 138 females; Mage = 28.48 years; SD = 11.58). Results identified maladaptive perfectionism to significantly, positively correlate with psychological distress in university students. The combination of increased maladaptive perfectionism, low resilience and low trait emotional intelligence significantly predicted psychological distress. Additionally, resilience and trait emotional intelligence significantly added to the prediction of psychological distress, above and beyond maladaptive perfectionism. Finally, resilience and trait emotional intelligence both partially mediated the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and psychological distress in university students. Findings suggest resilience and trait emotional intelligence to be important factors in predicting general psychological distress in student maladaptive perfectionists. The current study provided additional supporting evidence for the importance of resilience and trait emotional intelligence in intervention and prevention strategies for psychological distress in maladaptive perfectionist students. </jats:p

Fillers for improved graphite fiber retention by polymer matrix composites

The results of a program designed to determine the extent to which elemental boron and boron containing fillers added to the matrix resin of graphite/epoxy composites prevent the release of graphite fibers when the composites are exposed to fire and impact conditions are described. The fillers evaluated were boron, boron carbide and aluminum boride. The conditions evaluated were laboratory simulations of those that could exist in the event of an aircraft crash and burn situation. The baseline (i.e., unfilled) laminates evaluated were prepared from commercially available graphite/epoxy. The baseline and filled laminates' mechanical properties, before and after isothermal and humidity aging, also were compared. It was found that a small amount of graphite fiber was released from the baseline graphite/epoxy laminates during the burn and impact conditions used in this program. However, the extent to which the fibers were released is not considered a severe enough problem to preclude the use of graphite reinforced composites in civil aircraft structure. It also was found that the addition of boron and boron containing fillers to the resin matrix eliminated this fiber release. Mechanical properties of laminates containing the boron and boron containing fillers were lower than those of the baseline laminates. These property degradations for two systems: boron (5 micron) at 2.5 percent filler loading, and boron (5 micron) at 5.0 percent filler loading do not appear severe enough to preclude their use in structural composite applications

Geographies of Production I: Relationality revisited and the ‘practice shift’ in economic geography

This report considers recent developments and ongoing debates around relational economic geography, and a growing body work that has focused on economic practices as a means to better understand production processes and economic development. In particular it examines the critical reaction to relational thinking within the sub-discipline, and the nature of the debate about the degree to which relational work is - and needs to be - regarded as distinct from more traditional approaches to economic geography. It then considers how relational economic geography has become inflected towards an epistemological and methodological focus on practice. It argues that this engagement with economic practices provides the basis to respond to some of the limitations identified with earlier work, and opens up fruitful new potential for theorizing the nature of agency in the space economy

Spatial Interaction in Dynamic Urban Systems

It seems contradictory to model urban system change without considering changes in inter-urban interaction patterns, but this has frequently been the case in the urban literature. Consideration and explanation of changing interaction patterns is an area to which the "geographer's perspective" has much to contribute. Most explanations of city size distributions have ignored interactions and thus seem to be fundamentally in error. Short-term responses of cities to economic cycles may be identified and understood better by considering the inter-urban spacetime diffusion pattern of economic impulses. Long-term changes such as urban concentration and deconcentration can also be modeled with dynamic interactions. Among other conclusions it can be shown that unequal urban, and regional, growth rates are probable if interaction patterns are dynamic, even in the absence of economies of scale

City Size Distributions and Spatial Economic Change

The concept of the city size distribution is criticized for its lack of consideration of the effects of interurban interdependencies on the growth of cities. Theoretical justifications for the rank-size relationship have the same shortcomings, and an empirical study reveals that there is little correlation between deviations from rank-size distributions and national economic and social characteristics. When interdependencies are considered, there is little reason for city sizes to evolve into a rank-size or any other relationship. Thus arguments suggesting a close correspondence between city size distributions and the level of development of a country, irrespective of intranational variations in city location and socioeconomic characteristics, seem to have little foundation

Modelling Interdependencies in Hierarchical Settlement Systems

This paper discusses some fundamental difficulties faced by researchers attempting to model hierarchical settlement systems. Particular attention is paid to the problem of relating the effects of city size and of the regional location on growth prospects for a city. It is argued that the central issue here is a need to relate a multiregional specification of change to the hierarchical, overlapping regions that are typical of an urban system and reflect its city size distribution. A typology is provided of methods that convert interactions between arbitrarily defined regions into interactions between more meaningful functional, urban centered, regions. This is then used in an exercise that demonstrates how a conventional multiregional economic model may be restructured to allow use of a hierarchical set of functional regions, in such a way that regional economic theory may be used to ask questions about the effect of city size and regional location on urban phenomena

On Forecasting Urban and Rural Populations: Some Methodological Reflections

Most attempts to forecast the proportions of a population that will be living in urban and rural areas use a model forecasting shifts between two homogeneous states: rural and urban (Ledent, 1980; United Nations, 1980). The aim of this short paper is to attempt to estimate how such forecasts must be corrected to account for the full complexity of a multiregional system, and to allow transitions from rural to urban areas over time. Purely demographic discrete time forecasts from an initial period T to some future period T, will be considered, and the effects of age distributions on migration and fertility rates will be neglected. Instead, attention will be focused on an issue emphasized elsewhere (Sheppard, 1980); that the dynamics of urbanization cannot be fully understood or predicted without allowing for the interdependencies between the various types of urban and rural areas; that is the full geography of population change. By introducing a methodology to correct forecasts in a way that allows for this, the importance of this full specification may be estimated

Growth, Conflict and Crisis in the Urban System: A Neo-Marxian Approach to Modeling Inter-Urban Economic Dynamics

Many large urban agglomerations in the developed countries are either experiencing population decline or are growing at rates lower than those of middle-sized and small settlements. This trend is in direct contrast to the one for large cities in the less developed world, which are growing rapidly. Urban contraction and decline is generating fiscal pressures and fueling interregional conflicts in the developed nations; explosive city growth in the less developed world is creating problems of urban absorption. These developments call for the reformulation of urban policies based on an improved understanding of the dynamics that have produced the current patterns. During the period 1979-1982, the former Human Settlements and Services Area examined patterns of human settlement transformation as part of the research efforts of two tasks: the Urban Change Task and the Population, Resources, and Growth Task. This paper was written as part of that research activity. Its publication was delayed, and it is therefore being issued now a few months after the dissolution of the HSS Area

Nucleases and histone acetyltransferases in DNA repair and immune diversity

DNA repair mechanisms are essential for genome maintenance and adaptive immunity. A careful balance must be achieved whereby highly accurate and efficient canonical repair protects the genome from accumulating mutations that lead to aging and cancer, and yet mutation and error-prone non-canonical repair is required for generating immune diversity. Immune diversity is achieved within a tightly regulated environment in which mutator proteins are directed to the antibody locus to introduce a swathe of DNA damage. This produces high affinity antibodies that recognise an infinite number of invading pathogens. This process of secondary antibody diversification is dependent on both active transcription and DNA repair. Downstream of histone signalling, DNA repair nucleases are recruited to remove the damaged bases. The structure of damaged regions in the DNA can have very different conformations depending on whether the source of the damage is endogenous or exogenous. Specific DNA nucleases recognise particular DNA substrates and generate DNA intermediates that are repaired in conjunction with polymerases and ligases. Despite their multitude and importance to DNA repair, very few nucleases have been characterised, while the activities of some studied nucleases remain controversial. Conventional techniques for studying DNA nucleases have several disadvantages; they are hazardous, laborious, time-consuming, and capture nuclease activity in a discontinuous manner. Recognising a need for a safer, faster alternative, a fluorescence-based method has been developed for the study of DNA nucleases, nickases and polymerases. Key histone modifications that are known to orchestrate canonical DNA repair have since been discovered to regulate non-canonical repair at the antibody locus. The Kat5 histone lysine acetyltransferase functions highly upstream of DNA repair and promotes active transcription, yet a role for Kat5 in secondary antibody diversification has not yet been established. Using chemical inhibitors to prevent the catalytic activities of Kat5, and the genetic method of an inducible degron system for rapid and reversible downregulation of Kat5, a role for Kat5 in secondary antibody diversification is recognised, and the research contributes to our current understanding of the DNA repair signal transduction pathway